Tales from the Microbial Laboratory

~'What do I know?'~

The day was a good one.  I know, I had hoped for lots and lots of rain - but the tropical depression-turned-tropical storm clung to our coastline, reluctant (or simply unable) to come any closer.

Today I weeded.

Honestly?  It's been a few months since I weeded anything - you know, the kind of weeding where you sit down on the ground, in one spot for awhile, hands dirty, dogs bored, a few showers don't convince you to stop (because it is summer and hot and it is the south and the rain feels good)  - but the figs do, and from time-to-time you get up to walk over to the fig tree and stand there, wihile the mockingbirds fly in and out of the fig tree canopy, and you taste the sweetness of summer.

~~~~~

Daisies by Mary Oliver

It is possible, I suppose that sometime we will learn everything there is to learn: what the world is, for example, and what it means. I think this as I am crossing from one field to another, in summer, and the mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either knows enough already or knows enough to be perfectly content not knowing. Song being born of quest he knows this: he must turn silent were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly unanswered. At my feet the white-petalled daisies display the small suns of their center piece, their - if you don't mind my saying so - their hearts. Of course I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know? But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given, to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly; for example - I think this as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch - the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the daisies for the field.

'...hounddog-digging...'

Hydrangea macrophylla 'Big Daddy'. 

Aging gracefully (and yes, I included this one yesterday - a smaller version - but I just really love how the flower stalks turn a beautiful violet as this mophead ages).

~~~~~

Today was busy.

First a meeting with my architherapist and a prospective builder at my place.  (Now that seemed like a big step!). 

Then lab meeting - followed by another meeting that lasted for the rest of the afternoon.  I hate when my days get swallowed up by meetings, but for one exception:  lab meeting.  That meeting I never mind. 

There's interesting chatter, sharing of data - and of course the lab's Poet Laureate read us a poem.  This week's poem was particularly interesting (and one that required Katherine to take a deep breath before reading to us) - and the poem was by a poet born in South Carolina, now residing in California - and, according to the lab's Poet Laureate, he'll be reading Monday evening (21 July) at the East Bay Coffee House.

~~~~~

Map by Atsuro Riley

Daddy goes.
         Trolling and trawling and crawfishing and crabbing and bass-boating and trestle-jumping bare into rust-brackish water and cane-poling for bream and shallow-gigging too with a nail-pointy broomstick and creek-shrimping and cooler-dragging and coon-chasing and dove-dogging and duck-bagging and squirrel-tailing and tail-hankering and hard-cranking and -shifting and backfiring like a gun in his tittie-tan El Camino and parking it at The House of Ham and Dawn's Busy Hands and Betty's pink house and Mrs. Sweatman's brick house and Linda's dock-facing double-wide and spine-leaning Vicki against her WIDE-GLIDE Pontiac and pumping for pay at Ray Wade's Esso and snuff-dipping and plug-sucking and tar-weeping pore-wise and LuckyStrike-smoking and Kool only sometimes and penny-pitching and dog-racing and bet-losing cocksuckmotherfuck and pool-shooting and bottle-shooting over behind Tas-T-O's Donuts and shootin' the shit and chewin' the fat and just jawin' who asked you and blank-blinking quick back at me and whose young are you no-how and hounddog-digging buried half-pints from the woods.

~~~~~

'...hounddog-digging....'.  Sounds like The Dan.  She's got the 'Trench of Dan' going in the front yard.  She enjoys doing it so much, I haven't the heart to reprimand her.  It's an impressive ditch, she smiles while she's digging it.  What else can I do but...let her?

~misguided, but focused~

Today my intent was to download images of the beautiful flowering plants that that I saw during last week's visit to the Flamingo Gardens in Davie, Florida - but I got distracted (as always) by so many things that needed to be done:  catching up on work email, mowing the lawn - all of those things that catch up with you in a less than pleasant way when ignoring them for awhile.

So this evening, when I sat back down to look at the images, I stopped at the one above.  So much is going on!  Color, light, shadows.  It's not all that good of a photograph, but I couldn't stop looking at it - and dissecting it.  Ah yes, misguided but focused once again - but please bear with me.

~~~~~

As an aside:  head over to NPR to listen to two pieces covering last week's coral meeting that the lab attended - here (Talk of the Nation, 11 July 2008) and here (Morning Edition, 11 July 2008).  I've spent much of the day digesting some of what went on - and need to read the recently published article in Science (Carpenter et al. 2008.  One-third of reef-building corals face elevated extinction risk from climate change and local impacts.  Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1159196).  Here's the abstract:

The conservation status of 845 zooxanthellate reef-building coral species have been assessed using IUCN Red List Criteria. Of the 704 species that could be assigned conservation status, 32.8% are in categories with elevated risk of extinction. Declines in abundance are associated with bleaching and diseases driven by elevated sea surface temperatures, with extinction risk further exacerbated by local-scale anthropogenic disturbances. The proportion of corals threatened with extinction has increased dramatically in recent decades and exceeds most terrestrial groups. The Caribbean has the largest proportion of corals in high extinction risk categories while the Coral Triangle (western Pacific) has the highest proportion of species in all categories of elevated extinction risk. Our results emphasize the widespread plight of coral reefs and the urgent need to enact conservation measures.

It's undeniable that reefs are degrading at a rapid rate.  But an interesting question raised by a colleague was:  How long should a coral colony live?  That is, are many of these colonies old - and as part of their natural decline, are they becoming more susceptible to disease and environmental stressors?  I by no means think this is clearly what is going on - but it was an interesting question raised by my colleague, and one that I need to ask a real coral biologist.  I am definitely not one.  But the question did make me realize how much more I need to learn.  At this site, I saw this written at a National Geographic site with respect to coral lifespan:

Average lifespan in the wild: Polyp, 2 years to hundreds of years; colony, 5 years to several centuries

I know there is information out there dating corals and their skeletons.  I've obviously deficient in my knowledge of their lifespan.  But they are not immortal, that is not news -- so I'll stop rambling for now about something I know very little about.

~~~~~

But - back to the banana leaves.  They are so beautiful.  I've photographed my own recently - along with a luna moth - but the varieties were more diverse in Flamingo Gardens, and the contrast between the leaves and the shadows and the shapes were just wonderful.  I then became obsessed with grayscale images of the leaves above.

~~~~~

The image is dark.  Probably too dark to be any good - but look at the folds and creases in the leaves!  Remarkable.  Here I have a 4 GB card filled with images of flowers - and I can't leave this one image.

I had to look closer.

~~~~~

Perhaps it is the angle of the stalks - in contrast to the leaves.  Perhaps it is the light coming in through the tears in the leaf in the center.  I don't know. 

But there was just so much to look at.

~~~~~~

This one is almost identical to the one above. 

Yet different enough.

~~~~~

There are still things to see.

Yes, I know that I am ignoring the images of the comic spoonbill, the flowering gingers - the bamboo and the sacred fig tree.  I will come back to those, one day - when I am not as enamored with the leaves from banana trees.

I am also ignoring the packing that I need to do - to wrap up, actually.  And the pile of papers and mail on my kitchen counter.  I am also ignoring that I need to replace my lawn mower, but I do believe the time has come.

Perhaps I am hiding in these banana leaves.

~~~~~

I think that this might be my favorite image.  Maybe.  Yes.  For sure.

~~~~~

And then there is Ted Kooser (the US Poet Laurete from 2004-2006) who introduced me this evening (via his site American Life in Poetry) to a Hawaiian Poet, Joseph Stanton (you can read a bit about him here).

Until tonight. I was not familiar with Stanton's poetry.  Nor was I familiar with Pablo Nerudo's poem "United Fruit Company" poem (here is a translation) - I need to come back to this poem, and learn more about the 'Banana Republics' that Neruda writes about.  But for tonight, there is a poem about banana trees.  And my own images of banana leaves - ones that I have not, even yet, grown tired of.

~~~~~

Banana Trees by Joseph Stanton

They are tall herbs, really, not trees,
though they can shoot up thirty feet
if all goes well for them. Cut in cross

section they look like gigantic onions,
multi-layered mysteries with ghostly hearts.
Their leaves are made to be broken by the wind,

if wind there be, but the crosswise tears
they are built to expect do them no harm.
Around the steady staff of the leafstalk

the broken fronds flap in the breeze
like brief forgotten flags, but these
tattered, green, photosynthetic machines

know how to grasp with their broken fingers
the gold coins of light that give open air
its shine. In hot, dry weather the fingers

fold down to touch on each side—
a kind of prayer to clasp what damp they can
against the too much light.

    

~splitting stars~

It's been a busy weekend, after a busy week, after a busy...oh, this could go on forever.

My July 4th evening was spent seeing the Dave Matthews Band perform - it was the first time that I've seen them perform live - and I'd go into all of the 'six degrees of separation' with Dave and his group and myself, but if a few of my friends were reading this, they'd be rolling their eyes because I'd already told them a dozen or more times.  Needless to say, I had a blast - without a single firework on the horizon.

~~~~~

So tomorrow the lab leaves for Ft Lauderdale, and a meeting that we are excited about being a part of.  It's our first real meeting with the international coral research community - and it's a good time to sit back and think about the direction of the lab's research, and where are we going with respect to what is known and what needs to be known in a broader context.  The lab has five presentations - most of them are printed out as I type this, and ready - but one is taking more time, particularly because of scheduling earlier in the week, and partly because it is the first time that this member of the lab has prepared a poster of this kind.  There is a learning curve.  The interesting part of this is that it is Katherine's poster, the lab's poet laureate - and I've caught myself taking the poetry out of her writing and form, forcing her into a scientific framework that we are all comfortable with - precision and accuracy, no overstating of one's data - ahhhh, it leaves little room for poetic license, as Katherine, even as I type this - forges ahead.

~~~~~

So I couldn't help tonight, while thinking about a poet immersing herself in a scientific world, to think about another poet who often wrote (surprisingly often) somewhat obscure poems about science and the love of science - and in particular, to that poet's poem about a man who burned down his home so that he could buy a telescope in order to explore the skies.

~~~~~

The Star-Splitter by Robert Frost

"You know Orion always comes up sideways.

Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,

And rising on his hands, he looks in on me

Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something

I should have done by daylight, and indeed,

After the ground is frozen, I should have done

Before it froze, and a gust flings a handful

Of waste leaves at my smoky lantern chimney

To make fun of my way of doing things,

Or else fun of Orion's having caught me.

Has a man, I should like to ask, no rights

These forces are obliged to pay respect to?"

So Brad McLaughlin mingled reckless talk

Of heavenly stars with hugger-mugger farming,

Till having failed at hugger-mugger farming,

He burned his house down for the fire insurance

And spent the proceeds on a telescope

To satisfy a lifelong curiosity

About our place among the infinities.

"What do you want with one of those blame things?"

I asked him well beforehand. "Don't you get one!"

"Don't call it blamed; there isn't anything

More blameless in the sense of being less

A weapon in our human fight," he said.

"I'll have one if I sell my farm to buy it."

There where he moved the rocks to plow the ground

And plowed between the rocks he couldn't move,

Few farms changed hands; so rather than spend years

Trying to sell his farm and then not selling,

He burned his house down for the fire insurance

And bought the telescope with what it came to.

He had been heard to say by several:

"The best thing that we're put here for's to see;

The strongest thing that's given us to see with's

A telescope. Someone in every town

Seems to me owes it to the town to keep one.

In Littleton it may as well be me."

After such loose talk it was no surprise

When he did what he did and burned his house down.

Mean laughter went about the town that day

To let him know we weren't the least imposed on,

And he could wait—we'd see to him tomorrow.

But the first thing next morning we reflected

If one by one we counted people out

For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long

To get so we had no one left to live with.

For to be social is to be forgiving.

Our thief, the one who does our stealing from us,

We don't cut off from coming to church suppers,

But what we miss we go to him and ask for.

He promptly gives it back, that is if still

Uneaten, unworn out, or undisposed of.

It wouldn't do to be too hard on Brad

About his telescope. Beyond the age

Of being given one for Christmas gift,

He had to take the best way he knew how

To find himself in one. Well, all we said was

He took a strange thing to be roguish over.

Some sympathy was wasted on the house,

A good old-timer dating back along;

But a house isn't sentient; the house

Didn't feel anything. And if it did,

Why not regard it as a sacrifice,

And an old-fashioned sacrifice by fire,

Instead of a new-fashioned one at auction?

Out of a house and so out of a farm

At one stroke (of a match), Brad had to turn

To earn a living on the Concord railroad,

As under-ticket-agent at a station

Where his job, when he wasn't selling tickets,

Was setting out up track and down, not plants

As on a farm, but planets, evening stars

That varied in their hue from red to green.

He got a good glass for six hundred dollars.

His new job gave him leisure for stargazing.

Often he bid me come and have a look

Up the brass barrel, velvet black inside,

At a star quaking in the other end.

I recollect a night of broken clouds

And underfoot snow melted down to ice,

And melting further in the wind to mud.

Bradford and I had out the telescope.

We spread our two legs as it spread its three,

Pointed our thoughts the way we pointed it,

And standing at our leisure till the day broke,

Said some of the best things we ever said.

That telescope was christened the Star-Splitter,

Because it didn't do a thing but split

A star in two or three the way you split

A globule of quicksilver in your hand

With one stroke of your finger in the middle.

It's a star-splitter if there ever was one,

And ought to do some good if splitting stars

'Sa thing to be compared with splitting wood.

We've looked and looked, but after all where are we?

Do we know any better where we are,

And how it stands between the night tonight

And a man with a smoky lantern chimney?

How different from the way it ever stood?

~Mmmmm yummy yum yum!~

There is something elegant about the way many flowers decline - as they sit in a glass jar (nothing that one might call a vase) in a sunny window.  These gerbera daisies are now former flowers with petals like rice paper, with stems withered and twisted like twine.  Their color, first a bright almost fire-engine red, now the color of a malbec in your best wine glass.

~~~~~

There are two quotes that might best describe this day.  The first relates to the fact that I was unable to drive my car out of my driveway this morning, thus representing the second time in ten days that I've called a tow truck to come out to Pamdanistan.  This first quote is most likely highly unoriginal, but due to it's appropriateness in times like these, I'll share it with you nonetheless:

When life gives you lemons, make lemon drop martinis.

Now, the second quote is of a more scientific nature - and one that was on the first page of a chapter that a brownie-making and natural products-characterizing doctoral student in the lab showed me yesterday. 

I make no apologies for putting microorganisms on a pedestal above all other living things.  For if the last blue whale choked to death on the last panda, it would be disastrous but not the end of the world.  But if we accidentally poisoned the last two species of ammonia-oxidizers, that would be another matter.  It could be happening now and we wouldn't even know....

Tom Curtis (July 2006) in Nature Reviews Microbiology

~~~~~

So, have you ever thought about how many microorganisms become extinct when a plant or animal (with species-specific microbial communities associated with them) become extinct?  Read here if you happen to care.  But remember this warning:  it will keep you up at night.

~~~~~

And might I leave you this evening with a delightful and award-winning poem written by Lily R., a friend of the three-legged Haiku and to all animals small and large, and obviously a lover of lunch.  Her poem has won her a position in a writing camp this summer - so kudos to Lily!

Our Lunch Room is a Jungle

Tick, tock, tick

The clock strikes twelve.

All the kids run down the hall.

Take your seat and wait to eat.

Now get your lunch box and eat eat eat!

What’s inside? Apples and bananas too!

What’s for you?

Yogurt and noodles

Mmmmm yummy yum yum!

Lily R.
Grade 1

Actias luna

What a treat this morning - to spot a luna moth (Actias luna, Linnaeus, 1758) casting it's shadow on the back of a banana leaf (most likely laying eggs). 

These moths are members of the family Saturniidae - the saturniids - those large members of the Lepidoptera that usually stop you in your tracks when you spot one.

What a fleeting, spectacular - mysterious life.

~~~~~

Luna Moth by Cecily Parks (found here:  Blackbird:  an online journal of literature and the arts, Spring 2005, Vol. 4. No. 1)

Pale green and pressed against the window screen,
shot through with field, you watch nighttime's corners
curl with four white eyes, your under-self unfurled
to my one room of word—kettle, counter,

knife block. Having lived one of your life's
six nights, you leave a limp silhouette where you
left off—let me be the creature circling
your sleep. I am the most benign unknown;

I do not touch. With what nights are left, plant
your wing beat in my sleep, be the only
hovering thing. If only you could teach me
survival without sustenance, unworried
love, how to find oneself at a window
one morning and think nothing of what happens next.

"...and floating terraces"

While I was in Virginia last weekend, I spent quite a bit of time admiring a bearded iris in bloom in my Mother's garden.  It's one that I'll need to be sure to grab a piece of in the fall - to add to a growing bed of bearded irises in my own garden.

~~~~~

There's been alot going on of late.  There's movement on the house front, the laboratory seems to be in a bit of a frenzy (which is a good thing - and this is in spite of the fact that I spend 50% of my week in a meeting-induced coma while my garden is blissfully unware) - so, this all means that I'm swamped at work and the garden is in desperate need of my attention.  I still haven't decided on what fountain to purchase -- and I'm being unusually fickle about it.  I'm telling myself:  This week.  I'll make a decision this week.  I did manage to attend two Spoleto events, during this last week of the festival - the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Laurie Andersen (with surprise guest, her husband - Lou Reed).  The grass needs mowing, I still want to plant some annuals (in rows) in my raised garden beds - sunflowers, zinnias, and marigolds - and I still want to get my scarlet runner beans and purple hyacinth beans in the ground (yes, I'm late, I know).

And I have plants, plants sitting on the edge of my front garden is bags - mostly siberian and bearded irises, lilies, and two blueberry bushes - that I brought back from my Mother's garden that I need to plant.  Last weekend I helped my Father make one area of the garden easier to maintain - an area around two large cherry trees that had some irises and lots of smaller blueberry bushes that my Mother just planted there two years ago.  Some of the blueberries went to a neighbor, and then I brought two home - and now my Father is able to more easily mow the area around the trees.  He seemed relieved by this small change.  As much as I am not ready to accept this yet - we will need to slowly dismantled parts of my Mother's garden.  My Father is wonderful with the vegetable garden - but he is less motivated (and skilled) with respect to the flowers.

Today would have been - is - my Mother and Father's 55th wedding anniversary.  My Father has been sad today.

~~~~~

So it looks like this house...might get built.  I might meet as early as next week with my architherapist, the builder, and the LEED consultant - that would be a big step forward.  Structural and HVAC engineers have had the building plans this week (they are required for LEED).  I've actually made my way into a tile store (Melcer Tile) - and I actually took my camera to get some images of things I liked.  I'm leaning towards glass tiles in the kitchen for the backsplash - something in shades of blue and/or green - and while I saw some things I liked at Melcer, I'm leaning towards recycled glass tiles - from a place like Bedrock Industries.  I don't like all of their stuff - but there are some nice blues and greens that I could get in 4"x4" or 5"x5" tiles.  And I liked that they are made from 100% recycled material.  Another thing that I need to look at is fireplace inserts -- I'll have a two-way fireplace located inbetween the living and dining rooms - and we're looking for an efficient insert for that if we can find one (the Oracle fireplace is the only one that I've been able to find so far).  So there's much to do - and in a week or two, there will be even more -- as I get ready to finally jump into Airstream Life.  This weekend I need to resume packing - much of it is done, but there is still some stuff that I need to go through, and to decide what goes into storage, and what I absolutely must keep with me.  The list of what I absolutely MUST have is dwindling - it's been an interesting process over the past six to eight months of shedding the things that generally comfort me, and how relatively easy it is to go without them.

~~~~~

During the past several weeks lab meetings have resumed - and as usual, Katherine has been reading us a poem - some of them from poets presenting at this year's Sundown Poetry Series as part of Piccolo Spoleto (poets that I have neglected to mention here).  This past Wednesday, she read to us a poem from a poet that lives just across the border in North Carolina...and I can't help but dream about a floating terrace, floating across the grass in the front garden, shaded by the live oaks - or perhaps floating just over the tomatoes in their large pots in the side garden.  Better yet, perhaps it would linger over the two large gardenias, both in full bloom - just as the sun goes down, when one can't seem to gather enough of the fragrance around them, as if one ever could.      

~~~~~

When Our House Was Old by Malena Morling

If it's true

what Lorca said,

that dead people

hate the number two,

what do you suppose

they think of

the number three?

The number three

that can vanish

without a trace

twice into

the number six

and three times

into the number nine.

I'll tell you,

if I were dead,

I'd love

the number nine.

Because it's

as if it's made

of metal.

And it's liIac-

colored and beautiful

like a circle.

And also because

any number

divisible by nine,

itself adds up to nine.

Take for instance,

the number 18 or 27 or 36 ...

It's a puzzle

that's immaterial

and soundless,

like a shuttle.

A shuttle only the dead

travel by

from the horizon

to the pawnshops

in Vivian

and back.

Or from the horizon

to the stockyards

in Omaha

and from the stockyards

to Spain.

And from Spain;

back in time to when our house

was old

and we had

a lot of books

and Lorca was our light

of eyelids

and billfolds,

of bitter roots

and floating terraces.

From Katherine:  Malena Morling, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, is the author of "Ocean Avenue," selected by Phillip Levine for the New Issues Poetry Prize. She has translated works by the Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer, a selection of which appears in the collection "For the Living and the Dead".  Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times Book Review, New Republic, Washington Post Book World, Ploughshares, New England Review, and Five Points.

~untitled~

~~~~~

Untitled

Along the back fence row,

a quarter of an acre of soil, dry and sandy -

wild asters are growing.

I think they’re asters but I’m not sure.

If they’re not, it shouldn't matter – they seem unconcerned with my confusion

as I stand watching.

Wind, remnants of a strong front -

rolling in from the south

like a sweater of red wool, scratchy and warm.

The wind races across the asters,

forcing them to bend down

where they whisper politely to the sand:

‘I don’t mean to bother you’

the small white flowers say.

‘But this wind is too much for us’.

Finally the wind moves on, racing through the holes in the fence,

down the bank of the tidal creek -

creating ripples on the surface of the incoming tide.

Hydrangea serrata 'Blue Bird'

End of the day and a bit of nonsense.  I couldn't decide which of these two images to post tonight - I'd post one, then prefer the other - and then I'd switch them again.  So here they are, both of them, two images of the same flower.  I'm grateful that this 'Blue Bird' is surviving, since I fear that the bluebirds nesting in the purple martin house have had an unfortunate encounter with a very large hawk that seems to be frequenting my place of late.  One must take the good with the bad, since a swallowtail kite can be spotted overhead almost every day as well - something that I should report somewhere to someone, but haven't.  Does admiring them, privately, count for something...anything?  (If it doesn't, it should).  So a box of asparagus (an heirloom variety, 'Purple Passion') arrived in the mail, and I had completely forgotten that I had ordered them.  So last Sunday, Mother's Day, inbetween two tornado warnings, I dug trenches for the 25 crowns and got them planted.  Then two days ago I received a wonderful heirloom rose ('Valentine'), straight from the Antique Rose Emporium - a rose in honor of my Mom from a graduate school friend who knows how much I love roses.  It looks like a beautiful shrub rose (and I might just put it in a pot, it looks so beautiful in one in the ARE image).  And today?  My third viburnum arrived from Wayside, Viburnum carlesii (Korean spice viburnum), but I'm not quite sure yet where that one will go.  The garden does indeed grow, doesn't it?  (As does the grass, due to the weekend's rain - which means that I need to mow grass which I'm not in the mood to think about tonight.).

~~~~~

End of the day and a bit more nonsense.  My lab is in a funk.  Relax - Joy is hanging in there, perhaps even doing a bit better - but honestly, nothing is going right.  What is right you ask?  Well, it would be nice for our DNA to amplify - with the appropriate controls being clean.  It would be nice for someone to want to go in with us on antibiotic resistance and susceptible plates, since purchasing 2000 of them would bankrupt one part of our project.  It would be nice if a student's microbial isolate - one that she is pursuing with respect to a broad-spectrum anti-microbial would cooperative and sequence cleanly.  The '...it would be nice...' list seems very long this week - and as for me, it would be nice to not sit in a conference room all day, in meetings, because suddenly I find that I'm on every committee POSSIBLE.  It would be nice for the reviews of a rejected grant to refer to your model organism as a 'bottlenose dolphin' instead of (repeatedly) as a 'blue nose dolphin'.  What the hell is a blue nose dolphin?  The only one I could find is on sale for $5.99 and you have to be over 18 to purchase.  Geez.  And last evening the cranky dog from next door broke through my front fence (and came into my yard, along with his sidekick, named 'Little Man') and The Stanimal, in his 'I'm the man of the house' mode (and definitely not in his Stannish-let's-go-to-an- opera-and-preferably-something-italian mode) promptly jumped the cranky dog and soon there were people screaming on the other side of the fence 'your dog attacked my dog' and I'm thinking 'why the hell is your dog in MY yard?' and this from people whose dog runs wild, looks flea-infested and generally miserable.  (I would kidnap it, but it would be so obvious).  So the well-behaved (for the most part) Stanley is captured, stuck in the car, and when I go to open the front gate to let out the cranky dog, he tries to bite me.  Again:  Geez.

~~~~~

End of the day and a bit of poetry.  So the lab's senior graduate student presented today for lab meeting - his vision/question/hypothesis/approach regarding the role of membrane vesicles in his microorganism of interest.  I won't go into the sordid details - but basically we have to make some decisions, important ones, that will partially determine this student's fate over the next few months to a year - and will essentially determine the essence of his dissertation (you are thinking:  a dissertation has an essence??  Of course it does!  Come on now).  Proteomics?  If so, on what?  If so, how - qualitative or quantitative?  Semi-quantitative or...not?  What are the chances that it will tell us anything...anything at all?  A new Master's student has joined the lab - a young man who will start his project here, then head over to a lab in Australia where he will do additional studies, before heading back to Charleston to finish up.  Hmmm.  I hope that works.  If it does, it opens a few doors for us with respect to collaborators - and to the Great Barrier Reef as a field site.

~~~~~

But, you guessed it, we started lab meeting with a poem presented by Katherine.  The poem that she read was written by a Charleston poet who will be reading at tomorrow evening's The Main Branch Poetry Series, along with poets Kit Loney and Garret Doherty.  (I hope the poem keeps it's formatting when I save it - often it doesn't, so my apologies for that if it occurs...and if you notice). 

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Sleeptown by Bryan Penberthy

Places like this aren't invented.
            The cold, industrial polish of this city
skews light, and what it reflects

            it returns badly. Splitting the landscape,
an obsidian river carves
            silhouettes of brush and rocks, banks strewn with mica

and quartz shards, pale smoke frozen
            in crystal. A storm-split oak arcs into
bridge-lit water, a coral

            reef suspended in dandelion wine. The trees
and half-illuminated
            buildings seem submerged.

            I know so little
about things that matter. How
            to be a good man. Why rivers are constantly

moving, apparently toward
            ends that mean completion. Whether, drinking
their waters, I would forget

            these twilights—the smell of wet brick and broken pines,
indigo and sapphire-troubled
            skies—or drown. My distracted heart beats codes

I'm unable to translate.
            The only ritual I know how to perform
is rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

            

~joining the party~

Another hydrangea, joining the party.

The room's getting crowded, they're all vying for attention - eyeing their reflections, primping in the mirrors.

They're really lovely at this stage: eager, filled with promise, ready.

They change each hour - during these early days of spring.

~~~~~

Blaue Hortensie by Rainer Maria Rilke, July 1906, Paris

So wie das letzte Grün in Farbentiegeln
sind diese Blätter, trocken, stumpf und rau,
hinter den Blütendolden, die ein Blau
nicht auf sich tragen, nur von ferne spiegeln.

Sie spiegeln es verweint und ungenau,
als wollten sie es wiederum verlieren,
und wie in alten blauen Briefpapieren
ist Gelb in ihnen, Violett und Grau;

Verwaschenes wie an einer Kinderschürze,
Nichtmehrgetragenes, dem nichts mehr geschieht:
wie fühlt man eines kleinen Lebens Kürze.

Doch plötzlich scheint das Blau sich zu verneuen
in einer von den Dolden, und man sieht
ein rührend Blaues sich vor Grünem freuen.

(Translations may be found here).